Curiousity

So, I've been listening to this podcast called Role-Playing public radio for a while now. They have a pretty robust selection of actual plays and regular old topic-oriented content. Their actual plays are a lot of fun for me because I don't play very often, certainly not as much as I'd like to, I mean that in general terms, not in a "I always GM" way.

Anyway, they do a lot of neat stuff that ranges from talking about building ambiance and good npcs to game sessions at Gen Con or Fear the Con or the main guy's regular at home sessions with his gaming group. What I really like is the exposure to other systems that I'm getting. They do Call of Cthulhu, Mutants and Masterminds, GURPS, 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, Wild Talents, Monsters and Other Childish Things, and a few others I think.

What I find neat is that Monsters and Other Childish Things gaming system. At first I ignored those podcasts because I have no interest whatsoever really in playing a kid at school doing kiddly things. I only started listening to them because I was kind of having a dry spell on podcasts and I wanted to build up a buffer to run through.

I started listening to it and I'm finding the system to be a neat concept. It all seems to be based on the relationship between the child and their friends and family, and especially their monster. Kids have monsters, and they're monster monsters. The ones I've heard described so far were an enormous snake with more snakes for hands, a giant shark god thing, a swarm of giant rats, a diesel chugging thing called Truckhammerzilla (which was glorious), and a giant Cthulhlian teddy bear with claws and teeth and red eyes and a felt heart on its belly covered in unspeakable drippings.

Being a kid doing kiddly things probably isn't cool in an RPG, doing so with a fucking teddy bear birthed from the same black womb as Cthulhu, kind of cool. So cool in fact that I started thinking of an idea for a monster called Mr. Tuftyears. He's a giant black koala bear in a trenchcoat and fedora with red eyes and large fangs and claws. I kind of tried working him out with the Allies advantage or the Dependant (the kid) disadvantage in GURPS because I don't have any Monsters and Other Childish Things books.

So, in closing: Role-Playing Public Radio is kind of awesome and Monsters and Other Childish Things is a pretty nifty concept.

Presentation of Information

I've been hard at work on a few things (school, scenario, some writing odds and ends, etc), so I haven't been posting as much lately, I hope you'll forgive me.

I'm about an hour away from finishing the eighth scenario in our The Known World campaign and I'm pretty pleased with how it is going. I'm trying to force myself into becoming one of those GMs that is able to come up with details off the top of their head. I've decided I want to game more often, and to do that I need to slim my scenario data down as much as I can without leaving things vague. I don't need a paragraph of text for every room in the scenario, I just need a general impression of what it looks like and may or may not contain. If the players take an interest in the fixtures, I can just say "They're nice well taken care of brass, looks like they're regularly polished and dusted." rather than write that or a variation of it down for a few dozen rooms and whatnot.

I'm also working on a different method of organizing the data for the scenario as well. Rather than writing out every word an NPC might have cause to say, I just write out a general guideline of what they want to say, their personality, and what they may or may not need to hide from the players. This allows me to work from something that is informative and reminds me of the purpose of the NPC, but it keeps me from having two paragraphs of possible dialog options for them. I don't know, maybe it will help me organize things better, rather than just spam data. Anyone that has seen what I write for DnD has seen that I have lots of information to give people, but spend very little time organizing it into a format that is easily absorbed by others. I guess I'm doing all kinds of experimentation with this particular scenario. We'll see how everything goes.

On the GURPS front, we're supposed to be playing Eric's first scenario after his birthday in April, which is about nine months after we all got together and decided we were going to play some GURPS in the Reich-5 setting. I've accepted that fact, but I still think everyone should be aware of it. I still have no real handle on what I want to play, other than something psionic. I have an idea for playing a psychically potent brain in a jar or a "living" radiation shadow, but I dunno how practical they'll be. I dunno, whatever. I did speak to Dan and Laura the other night about GURPS and how it relates to my campaign world, and they both agreed that it might be fun to join up for that. This means that if the current group continues on to GURPS plus Dan and Laura, we have a group of eight players and a GM. Holy shitfuck. For that group I might seriously need another GM.

I've already started a bit of work on the true conversion to GURPS for my campaign world. It works pretty well. I've got two races down and so far I am able to keep the amount of data spammed at the players to a minimum. Its basically, ok, this is what the race is about, this is what they have to have to be this race, and here are some suggestions. Hopefully I'll be able to keep that theme of only the most pertinent details being thrown at the players. The extra stuff is good to throw into the ZuluPad thing, or in the story that Eric, Jeremy, and I are posting back and forth. I guess I'm realizing that it is better to let the players be curious about something, and ask questions or investigate it on their own, rather than throw three thousands words of text at them telling them everything they'll ever need to know.

On the writing front, I've started two new stories. One called Fear of Water which is about the Nel after the events of The Last Blade that will very likely get canned until I feel like picking up the Nel again. The other is Soulless, a collection of short stories about a certain soulless that kind of chronicle his life and adventures. Actually, I've started three, not two. The third one is called Rebels and I don't find myself liking it at all, so it will probably not go anywhere. I dunno. I like to write and I'm writing, so I guess I can't complain.

I also have an idea for a mini I'd like to play around with and work on. I'll have to order some bits though, because the model pieces I need are fantasy bits and not 40k bits.

Edit After The Fact: I was twenty minutes from finishing the scenario. I still have to review everything and write out the Walthuler missive though, so it may end up being an hour. We'll see.

Music: Killer Queen - Queen

Music: Stone Cold Crazy - Queen

Concerns

New ZuluPad Document:http://www.mediafire.com/?5jmomjwmymm

It has been a bit since I've last updated so I figured I should mosey back on in here and type some stuff out.

To be brief: I have some concerns about last time. The PCs are blackmailing the head of a terrorist cell bent on bringing revolution to his hometown. He is not a god or a king, more on par with a mob boss. I feel like they're in over their heads and I don't know how to make that apparent without feeling like I'm picking on them. They, Martel in particular, seem to feel like those armbands make them untouchable.

The problem (as I explained it to Eric last night) is that they're walking around with an armband on their person and several hidden away on their various properties. Now, they can walk up to a reaver and say "Hey, I found these in a bank." and seal the fate of the city and Nakmander himself. Or, they could be walking around and get into a tussle with some folks in a bar and a reaver sees them with their armband. Or they try to cross into a secure area of the city and get searched. Or they enter the domain of a city official and get searched, their weapons confiscated, and their armband discovered. Or Nakmander says, "Hey Cenn, I've got some dudes that just robbed me and they've got some reaver armbands. I don't know where they got them but I thought I might let you know."

I don't know. I feel like some of them think they have Nakmander and the rebellion by the short hairs and it seems more like a Cold War-esque mutually assured destruction situation. Without evidence of who exactly killed the reavers (or if they are even actually dead) the possessor of such items has only their word that the items don't belong to them. It comes down to a situation of Nak's word against theirs, and Nakmander is better at Bluff and Diplomacy than them I think.

I dunno. This is a touchy issue because I want to reward the players for sticking to their guns and role-playing a bit. I also want to make it difficult for them because it is a difficult situation. The armbands aren't just a big red WIN button and I don't want them to feel like they run shit in Hell and whatnot. I want them to feel like they stand upon the edge of a knife and if they stray but a little, they're going to get fucked.

I guess I just need to find a way to keep them feeling empowered, but also punish blatantly foolish arrogance. Hopefully Eric and Jeremy can keep them civil, perhaps they'll share the events and timeline of my The One-Eyed Man story with the group. We shall see.

06 - The Heist

So here it is I guess. Hopefully it all works.

Part 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?egxnot2zkzq

Part 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?nmieiowjq1o

Part 3:http://www.mediafire.com/?y2jdnzmnwz3

Part 4: http://www.mediafire.com/?jwddmnzwzqv

Part 5: http://www.mediafire.com/?tvomygq1wma

Part 6: http://www.mediafire.com/?2jihtwtmqyx

Part 7: http://www.mediafire.com/?mmth3yjz2gy

Part 8: http://www.mediafire.com/?timinmkn2ym

Part 9: http://www.mediafire.com/?jj0yudgmrig

ZuluPad: http://www.mediafire.com/?tc2kjxjnmcq

Some 101

Night fowls are a species of small bird native to Kusseth. They are about the size of your average quail, have black feathers and a glossy black beak. Their wings have a thin layer of chitin that runs across the front of their wings like a tiny blade and their bodies have actually been found to have an exoskeleton like a bug's beneath their feathers, they also have compound eyes like insects, this makes them a strange fusion of insect and avian features. They are The Known World's platypus. Night fowls gather together in small flocks of ten or twelve birds and have an immense attraction to shiny metal objects and this often leads them to nest in scrapyards or foundries, much to the irritation of metalworkers.

I need a big rubber stamp that says CANON on it for shit like this.

Also 1.0: The whole point of Kusseth is impracticality and inefficiency on a nation-wide scale.

Also 2.0: Am I the only one that considered the fact that a nation with a city that has living obsidian walls infused with magic in it might not possess the exact same banking system(s) as Earth and might not have something like bank insurance or an FDIC?

Brass Balls

I do not even know where to begin. We gamed Saturday evening and Sunday mid-day. Roughly nine hours in total. I had a lot of fun and I think everyone else did as well, which we usually do. The two part gaming sessions made things a lot more relaxed towards the end and when the end game appeared the group really had some time to figure things out and plan out what they were going to do. I was really pleased with the way the scenario went, there were some hiccups when Jeremy and I were attempting to role-play, but that's ok because we so rarely do that so some stumbling was to be expected. I also honestly think we (Jeremy and I) didn't plan enough or talk enough about what we thought D'alton's old friend's role would be in the scenario. I had always planned on him being a loose end, but I think that D'alton and the group were thinking that he would be kind of like an informant or quest giver about the heist and how to go about doing it.

We'll return to the scenario itself in a moment.

I really enjoy using the microphone, it has been pretty interesting to play with Audacity and clean up the files (somewhat) so I can give them a listen at my leisure. In our first part of the session we had the microphone right on the table like a giant metal phallus in our faces (Eric's in particular). When we reconvened on Sunday we put the microphone on the floor beneath the table. That seemed to cut down on the noise level, the background static, and it actually made use forget about the presence of the microphone (until Eric kicked it over). It has been pretty interesting to listen to us and how we interact and how I speak and convey information while gaming. Its also neat to listen to my actual voice and not the voice I hear when I speak.

Back to the scenario.

The stones on these motherfuckers. After being out of the game for eight years, Jeremy has D'alton and the group just wander back into town and go after the very same bank that he got put away for trying to crack open. They don't even really set foot in it to look around the place, except for Man and D'alton playing around in the vents at night and John going in to withdraw some funds. They get everything situated and do everything but investigate the bank itself and who their clients are. Things progress and they crack the vault and there comes a point where Jeremy realizes what D'alton has gotten himself and the group into, and just wow. I loved it. I could almost feel Jeremy's reaction to his realization. Just the whole last hour or so of the scenario was filled with tension, the chase, the rowed'hause, when they realized someone was outside their hideout.

I'm not going to go over everything here and talk about the scenario in great detail, some readers like Shawn may attempt to listen to it. What I am going to say is that I've been gaming for fifteen years and the last hour or two of the scenario was literally hands down the most awesome gaming I've had in that time. Nice job guys.

...now I just have to try and top it. Eek.

AJLG

Tony and were talking back in the day (and by that I mean this past Wednesday) about some things I mentioned in my previous post, just basic chit chat about how to get players interested in the world of the campaign setting and whatnot. He had an idea that never occurred to me and I really like it.

If I remember correctly the gist of it is that you (the GM) create backgrounds for everyone, rather than let them willy nilly create whatever they want. Or at the very least you create the portion of their background that involves the why and when of their involvement in the campaign. This way you can rely on yourself, rather than a ragtag collection of heathens, to figure out why the group is a group and why they're saving the world or burning it to a cinder or whatever.

I think I might try this in my next campaign. The GURPS one-shot adventure is going to be just that, a one-shot, so I don't intend on doing too much background work for the characters other than giving them names and allowing the players to pick which one they want to play.

I might talk to everyone when the time approaches to start a new campaign, which could be quite a long time from now as it stands with our once every two months gaming schedule. I guess I'll just bring the idea up at the appropriate time and see what everyone has to say.

Music: Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz